Articles tagged with: Arkansas unemployment rate

Want a bit of good news from the real estate industry for a change? According to the national Mortgage Bankers Association, people are starting to come back slowly to the housing market. It’s hard to do “apples to apples” comparisons these days thanks to increased sales activity from April 2008 through April 2010, but the association has reported a trend that is somewhat encouraging – purchase mortgages increased three of the four months prior to November. Furthermore, the association predicts that purchase originations should increase to $615 billion this year from $473 …

A heck of a lot of things have happened throughout Arkansas this week. We’ve covered some of those events here at First Arkansas News, but certainly not all of the events followed by Arkansans this week. In the interest of providing a quick summary of some of the stories we’ve followed this week, we’ve put together a synopsis of some of the more intriguing stories that have come out this week. And, yes, we’ll do the same thing every weekend. Before getting into all of that, let me make a quick plug …

As anyone who has been paying attention is well aware, the economy is still a mess. The Arkansas Department of Workforce Services reported the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent in October — up slightly over the 7.7 percent rate in September and up from 7.5 percent a year ago. Meanwhile, the national unemployment rate was 9.6 percent — down from 10.1 percent a year ago. In short, Arkansas’ civilian workforce totals 1.34 million and 104,800 of those able-bodied employees are looking for jobs. Beverly Smith, co-owner of Career Staffing Services (CSS) in North …

The Arkansas Department of Workforce Services reports that unemployment increased to 7.7 percent in September from 7.5 percent in August. Arkansas beat out the national unemployment rate of 9.6 percent in September. The state unemployment rate in September last year was 7.5 percent. What’s going on here? The Department, in a news release, states continued declines in the manufacturing industry and the loss of temporary jobs for Census workers are primarily to blame for the higher unemployment rate in September. More than a couple of economists have predicted unemployment rates would rise …